Rims

[snoranger]

That one is a can of worms but shouldn't be, engines use fuel to make power, motors use power to make rpms. But we have Ford Motor Company, General Motors, BMW(Bavarian Motor Works), motor oil for engines and motor bearing oil for actual motors, motor mounts, motorists who drive vehicles with engines. I give up on that one.

Let’s not forget all the enginecycles... er... motorcycles out there.

 

[professor229]

Thanks to all for the advice and suggestions about the rims.... ahhhhh wheels? Oh... you know..... I did a bunch of research after I posted and found a couple excellent websites devoted specifically to the variety of rims for a Ford Ranger... and learned everything I needed to learn. And to add to this, I looked at my MN auto recycler website for a used set of rims and before it takes you to the individual recycling outfits, it asks for the exact kind/size of rim you are looking for which tells you what was available for a Ranger.... In my case, I want steel rims.... they clean up easy (both front and back) and are easy to restore..... I use self etching primer on them first after a ton of prep, then two layers of primer..... paint doesn't like self etching primer.... The top bead is always "broken" and pushed down so some home made wood pieces fit under the rim to protect the tires.... I do like black paint.... but I also like the hammered paint look or "wheel paint" too.... In this case, my Ranger is a plain jane.... so black paint seemed to be the way to go.... simple and cheap.... The hub caps were awful but with a little work, they did clean up fine..... I found a pair of lugger snow tires for it on CL for $60, but then found U PULL IT PARTS that want $21 per wheel with a tire.... They have six Rangers at the location I will hit soon and take a look for the eight near oval steel rims and hope to luck out with a couple with decent tires on them; perhaps Wilderness tires... don't ask for much do I???? and if I strike out, then there are swap meets all summer long.... fun.... I have no idea how old my manual tire changer is... but it came "red" and is now "pink" and I have changed a lot of tires over the past decades for the cost of this $40 unit back then.... I also have my own balancer..... old technology that still works great..... On these wheels, I do remove the wheels weights but I also mark them.... but before I put anything back I do rebalance them... In this case the lady who sold it to me said there was a little nervousness in the steering above 60 mph.... I found two of the wheels that were completely out of balance and had NO weights on them.... rare.... and I also found one tie rod that was in a word, awful.... and replaced both tie rods and will do an alignment on it too.... As far as tires, I kept a used set of tires that are decent and will fit on these.... I thought about keeping the two decent tires that came on the Ranger, but upon further inspection, there was some "cracking" down the tread..... and life is too short to deal with that so I will replace all four for now. But first, I need to head to U PULL IT PARTS... Thanks again... Next up is paint..... on a budget.... and yes, I do my own.....